07 December 2017 - #MeToo Movement Named 'Person of the Year'
Person of the Year 2017: The Silence Breakers
Stephanie Zacharek, Eliana Dockterman and Haley Sweetland Edwards (Time Magazine,06/12/2017)
Movie stars are supposedly nothing like you and me. They're svelte, glamorous, self-possessed. They wear dresses we can't afford and live in houses we can only dream of. Yet it turns out that—in the most painful and personal ways—movie stars are more like you and me than we ever knew.
In 1997, just before Ashley Judd's career took off, she was invited to a meeting with Harvey Weinstein, head of the starmaking studio Miramax, at a Beverly Hills hotel. Astounded and offended by Weinstein's attempt to coerce her into bed, Judd managed to escape. But instead of keeping quiet about the kind of encounter that could easily shame a woman into silence, she began spreading the word.
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Silence Breakers
Time magazine has named “the silence breakers” its person of the year for 2017, referring to those women, and the global conversation they have started.
The magazine’s editor in chief, Edward Felsenthal, said in an interview on the “Today” show on Wednesday that the #MeToo movement represented the “fastest-moving social change we’ve seen in decades, and it began with individual acts of courage by women and some men too.”
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Person of the Year
Philip Bump (The Washington Post, 06/12/2017)
The next time an American woman was named “Person of the Year” (or, at that time, “Man of the Year”) to the exclusion of any man was in 1975, when the winner of the title was … “American Women.” (Before that, American women were included in the winning group twice, first when “The Inheritor” won in 1966 — apparently a reference to baby boomers — and then in 1969 when “Middle Americans” did.)
On Wednesday, the magazine announced its 2017 winner, as you’ve probably heard: “The Silence Breakers,” a reference to the women (and a few men) who spoke out about sexual harassment, precipitating a remarkable moment of public accountability for people — almost all men — in positions of power in the country.
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Misogyny
Jane Merrick (CNN, 06/12/2017)
The choice by Time of the "Silence Breakers" -- the women and men who have spoken out about their experiences of rape, sexual assault and harassment -- as Person of the Year 2017 is not just a recognition of the jolt to society the #MeToo movement has caused. It is a perfect counter-blast to Trump's record on women.
In 2016, Time placed Hillary Clinton as runner up to Trump. In 2017, the president -- whose obsession with winning is planetary -- is second in line after the Silence Breakers.
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